False Fingerprint
Evidence

Alameda County, CA

John Stoppelli

1948

(Federal Case) John Stoppelli was convicted of drug
trafficking in an Oakland federal court. Internal Revenue Agent W. Harold
“Bucky” Greene determined that Stoppelli's fingerprint was on a package of
heroin seized in an Oakland raid in which four men were arrested. Greene
found fourteen matching ridge characteristics. The four men said he was not
involved and, on the day of the raid, Stoppelli had registered with his
probation officer in New York, 3,000 miles away. An FBI lab later
determined the print did not match Stoppelli. Stoppelli then sought a new
trial, but his request was denied, because the FBI analysis was not “new”
evidence, just a reevaluation of “old” evidence. U.S. President Truman
commuted Stoppelli's sentence after he had served 2 years. (Justice:
Denied) [1/07]

Los Angeles County, CA

James Preston

Oct 18, 1924

James W. Preston was convicted of robbing a Los Angeles widow
and shooting her when she tried to escape. The victim, Mrs. Dick R.
Parsons lived at 906 W. 50th St. The perpetrator had entered through a
first floor window, and on the dust of the screen, fingerprints were found. Preston was arrested on a minor charge a few days after the crime. His
fingerprints were compared with those found on the screen, but did not
match. For some reason, however, the Los Angeles newspapers carried
stories stating that Preston had been identified as Mrs. Parsons' assailant
through the fingerprints. The source of this misinformation could not
be determined.Read More by Clicking Here

Orange County, CA

William DePalma

Nov 28, 1967 (Buena Park)

(Federal Case) William DePalma was convicted of on
charges of being the sole gunman who robbed the Mercury Savings and Loan in
Buena Park, CA. Following the crime, Sergeant James David Bakken, an
Identification Officer for the Buena Park Police, identified a partial
fingerprint purportedly lifted from the bank counter as the fingerprint of
DePalma. A local warrant was issued, but it was subsequently dismissed
and the case was tried in U.S. District Court.

At trial, Sergeant Bakken testified as a government witness. An FBI latent print examiner also testified, but only in regard to whether
the lifted fingerprint matched DePalma's fingerprint. He gave no
testimony on the source of the found fingerprint. DePalma was
sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Some time later, presumably years, Sergeant Bakken was
indicted in a completely separate matter for perjury and for manufacturing
evidence. Since DePalma had been persistent in his claims of
innocence, authorities re-examined the partial fingerprint in his case. They concluded that the partial fingerprint was not lifted from a bank
counter, but from a photocopy of DePalma's fingerprint. DePalma's
conviction was vacated in Feb. 1974. DePalma later sued the City of
Buena Vista and in Aug. 1975 accepted “a sizeable settlement.” (Source) (The
Fingerprint That Lied)
[12/07]

Cook County, IL

James Newsome

Oct 30, 1979

James Newsome was convicted of the murder of Edward “Mickey”
Cohen, 72, during a robbery of Cohen's grocery store. The store was located
at 8911 S. Loomis St. in Chicago. After two eyewitnesses had picked
photographs of someone else out of a mug book, police put Newsome into a
lineup. He was then informed that he had been identified. Newsome was
tried and convicted of murder and armed robbery based on these witnesses and
a third eyewitness. In 1989, Newsome obtained a court order requiring the
Chicago Police Department to run unidentified fingerprints from the murder
scene through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The check
was run, and the officer in charge falsely reported that the search found no
prints matching anyone else. It was not until five years later that
police admitted that prints were found to match those of Dennis Emerson, who
by then was on death row for another murder. Newsome was freed in 1994 and
Gov. Edgar granted him a pardon based on innocence in 1995. In 2003,
Newsome was awarded $15 million for 15 years of wrongful incarceration. (CWC)
[6/05]

Suffolk County, MA

Stephen Cowans

May 30, 1997

Stephen Cowans was convicted of charges related to firing a
bullet into Sgt. Detective Gregory Gallagher's buttocks using the officer's
own gun. The conviction was based on fingerprint evidence, but it was later
determined that the fingerprint that allegedly matched Cowans, came from a
hostage of the real shooter. The officer and another witness identified
Cowans as the assailant, but the hostage witnesses who spent the most time
with the assailant disagreed. The Boston Police Department technician who
processed and matched the fingerprint had been suspended for ten days in
1992 after he was caught drunk without his pants along the Charles River. DNA tests exonerated Cowans and he was released in 2004. In 2006, Cowans
was awarded $3.2 million. (IP)
(Boston
Globe) (Boston
Phoenix) [10/05]

St. Louis County, MN

Roger Sipe Caldwell

June 27, 1977

Roger Sipe Caldwell was convicted of murdering Elisabeth
Congdon, an elderly Duluth heiress, and her nurse, Velma Pietila. Caldwell
had married Marjorie Congdon LeRoy, the adopted daughter of the victim, in
1976. Marjorie received $22,000 per year from trust funds established by
the Congdon family, and stood to inherit and estimated $8,200,000 when her
mother died. Caldwell was convicted because his fingerprints allegedly
matched prints left behind by the perpetrator. A year later when his
alleged co-conspirator, Marjorie, went to trial, three expert witnesses for
the defense testified that Caldwell's prints did not match. Marjorie was
acquitted. Caldwell's conviction was later reversed on appeal. Rather than
face another trial, Caldwell entered a time-served plea and was released. (State
v. Caldwell) (More Than Zero)
[10/07]

Washington County, OR

Brandon Mayfield

Mar 11, 2004

(Federal Case) On March 11, 2004, a number of bombs were
detonated on trains in Madrid, Spain, which killed 191 people and injured
about 2000 others, including American citizens. A bag containing
detonation caps was found outside a train station through which all the
bombed trains had left or had passed through. On March 17, digital
images of fingerprints found on the bag were transmitted to the FBI and run
through their AFIS database of fingerprints. When latent print #17 was
run, the database produced 20 possible matches. FBI Senior Print
Examiner Terry Green then manually compared the potential matches and found
a 100% match with the fourth ranked print on the AFIS list. The FBI
has long claimed that fingerprint identification is infallible. A top FBI
fingerprint official had testified to a “zero error rate.”Read More by Clicking Here

Dauphin County, PA

Gary W. Rank

Mar 22, 1979 (Gratz)

Gary W. Rank was tried for the murder of 78-year-old Helen
Elizabeth Horn. Horn was found strangled and beaten to death in her Gratz,
PA home. Rank was acquitted after NYU professor Salvatore Nicosia
demonstrated how plastic fingerprint impressions taken of Rank were
transferred to Horn's property. Rank filed a civil suit against Sgt. Joseph
Van Nort and Trooper John J. Holtz for planting the fingerprints, as the two
had investigated the crime. State policeman Cpl. John Balshy, a fingerprint
expert, was also named with them. A civil jury found the suit defendants
guilty of planting fingerprints and they were ordered to pay Rank a five
figure sum. The planting apparently was performed with Sirchie fingerprint
pads. (Joseph Wambaugh and the Jay Smith Case, Chapter 23) (Court
Actions) [11/10]

Delaware County, PA

Rickie Jackson

Sept 1997 (Upper Darby)

Richard C. Jackson was convicted of the murder of 38-year-old
Alvin Davis, his friend and former gay lover. Jackson was a
hairdresser who resided in West Philadelphia. Davis was stabbed to
death and his body was found nine days later in his second floor apartment
at 422 Long Lane in Upper Darby.Read More by Clicking Here

Northampton County, PA

Robert Loomis

May 3, 1918 (Easton)

Robert Loomis was convicted of murdering Bertha Myers during a
burglary. Two fingerprint experts testified for the prosecution that a
latent print found on a jewelry box belonged to Loomis. Loomis won a new
trial because the trial judge had prejudiced the jury against Loomis, and he
won a third trial for the same reason. At Loomis's third trial, the
prosecution admitted that Loomis was not the source of the latent print and
declined to offer it into evidence. The record does not show what led the
government to this conclusion. Loomis was acquitted and released in 1921.
(More Than Zero)
(Phila Inquirer)

Smith County, TX

Kerry Max Cook

June 10, 1977 (Tyler)

Kerry Max Cook was sentenced to death for the murder of Linda
Jo Edwards, a 21-year-old secretary. Edwards was a college student who
was having an affair with her married professor. Cook was arrested in
a club where he worked as a bartender. The club was chiefly known as a
gay bar, and police theorized that Cook was a degenerate homosexual who
hated women.Read More by Clicking Here

Davis County, UT

David Valken-Leduc

Oct 29, 1996 (Woods Cross)

David Jonathan Valken-Leduc was convicted in 2004 of the
murder of Matthew John Whicker, a Motel 6 night clerk. Whicker, 30,
was shot multiple times and died in the motel lobby. In 1996, police
arrested Todd Jeremy Rettenberger in regard to the shooting. Although
Rettenberger knew Valken-Leduc, for five years he never mentioned
Valken-Leduc's involvement in the crime. In 2001, Scott Spjut, a
Certified Latent Print Examiner, identified a bloody fingerprint found at
the scene as belonging to Valken-Leduc. Rettenberger then implicated
Valken-Leduc in the crime. In 2003, Spjut was shot and killed by a
rifle he was inspecting at a crime lab. The bloody fingerprint was
then re-examined and found to belong to Whicker rather than to Valken-Leduc.

Rettenberger, who has twice pleaded guilty to manslaughter in
Whicker's death, agreed to testify against Valken-Leduc in exchange for his
immediate release from jail after spending 63 months there. At trial
Rettenberger testified that he drove Valken-Leduc, then 17, and another man,
Elliot Rashad Harper, to the Motel 6 with plans to rob it. Rettenberger stood outside and watched Valken-Leduc and Harper confront
Whicker inside. Something then went wrong, resulting in a scuffle and
then gunshots. He named Valken-Leduc as the triggerman. Valken-Leduc testified that he had once had a loose friendship with
Rettenberger, but that he cut contact after Rettenberger let a mutual friend
take the blame for something Rettenberger had done.

Following Valken-Leduc's conviction, his defense attorney said
that Rettenberger's contradictory confessions should have been introduced to
the jury “to impeach his credibility.” He also objected to the prosecution
making inconsistent allegations in its trials of Rettenberger and
Valken-Leduc, saying he believes such discrepancies in the trials of
co-defendants are unconstitutional.

Harper, who also maintained his innocence, was subsequently
tried, but his trial resulted in a hung jury. In 2008, he pleaded to
lesser charges and was released from custody. Valken-Leduc said he
told his mother before she died that he takes some responsibility: “I chose
to be acquainted with Todd Rettenberger. That's a mistake I made and I have
to live with it.”

On June 16, 2009, Valken-Leduc's conviction was vacated and he
was released from custody after entering an Alford plea in which he did not
have to admit guilt. He will be on probation for three years. (Deseret
News) (Standard
Examiner) (DN
#2) [6/09]

Scotland

Asbury & McKie

Jan 8, 1997 (Kilmarnock)

David Asbury was convicted of
murdering 51-year-old Marion Ross and stealing a biscuit tin from her
containing £1800. The victim's ribs were crushed and she was stabbed
in the eye with scissors. The scissors were left embedded in her throat. There were no signs of forced entry, but police discovered that some
builders, including Asbury, had had access to her home the previous year. During a search of Asbury's apartment, Detective Shirley McKie found a
biscuit tin in his bedroom containing £1800. Asbury maintained the tin
and the money were his. However the Scottish Fingerprint Service, a
division of the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO), found Ross's
fingerprint on it. Since the tin provided a possible motive of theft
for the murder, police believed the tin had belonged to the victim. At
Asbury's trial for murder, expert witnesses from the SCRO testified that a
fingerprint found on the tin was that of Ross.Read More by
Clicking Here